Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Beartown

Beartown is a small town, where everyone worships the hockey team.
Basically, the town’s future is riding on the success of the junior boys’ hockey team.
Each chapter contains lots of different characters & shifts between their perspectives.
Check trigger warnings, as main conflict in book involves sexual assault/rape.

MY THOUGHTS

The writing style was strange to me. I didn’t like the third person narrator, and I wasn’t a fan of the shifting perspective every few minutes.
Sooo many characters & perspectives that I never felt truly connected to any of them.
The ending was not satisfying.
Story drags on far too long.

TL;DR: ⭐️⭐️this one wasn’t for me, unfortunately.

Content Warnings

waywardgurl's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

salt_y's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Frederick Backman simply has a way with words. Although this book made me cry most of the time, all the characters were written with such care that it took my breath away. The beginning was rather hard to get into properly, especially with the constantly switching perspectives, representing basically everyone who lives in Beartown. As soon as the 40% mark hit however, I couldn't put it down and was destroyed by the story in the best way. Mind the content warnings before going into this!

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